The personification of female sorrow. According to Grecian fable, Niobe was the mother of twelve children, and taunted Latona because she had only twonamely, Apollo and Diana. Latona commanded her children to avenge the insult, and they caused all the sons and daughters of Niobe to die. Niobe was inconsolable, wept herself to death, and was changed into a stone, from which ran water. Like Niobe, all tears (Hamlet.)

1

The group of Niobe and her children, in Florence, was discovered at Rome in 1583, and was the work either of Scopas or Praxiteles.

2

The Niobe of nations. So Lord Byron styles Rome, the lone mother of dead empires, with broken thrones and temples; a chaos of ruins; a desert where we steer stumbling oer recollections. (Childe Harold, canto iv. stanza 79.)